In The Pursuit of Literacy

I am running for India ...

I am running for running ..

Yes, I have run two half marathons in the past (SF 2007 and Silicon Valley 2008). But, this time it is different. This time, I am motivated by my strong belief that education is a fundamental right. Education is a ticket for a better life. I believe in life, liberty, literacy and the pursuit of happiness - the third in this list taken for granted by most of us.

Just in case you need data:

1. About 1/6th of the world can't read. That's more than a billion people.
2. More than 350 million in India can't read. That's well over the population of the United States.

Today, Asha for Education has more than 1000 active volunteers across 70 different chapters worldwide. Since its inception, Asha has supported 400+ different projects in many states of India. In terms of project funding, over 8 million dollars was disbursed to these projects and has impacted more than 500,000 children. You can find more information about the projects Asha-Silicon valley supports by going here.

I am targeting to raise $2100 and I will be truly happy if I could raise more. Team Asha pledges to keep operational costs at a maximum of 3%, and strive in the process that 100% of your contribution will go towards the cause. Charity navigator, and independent organization that rates charities has given Asha for Education a 4 star rating, the highest.

I seek your help in accomplishing this noble cause and passing the finish line with a huge smile.

Regards,
-Ganesh

Suggested contributions:

1. $26.2 - $2 per mile
2. $52.4 - $4 per mile
3. $104.8 - $ 8 per mile
4. $xxx - I want to spread more happiness !! :-)

Ways to contribute:

1. Credit card: Please clock on this runnersnet page: here
2. Cash/Check: Contact me at gventataraman AT NOT com (just to go past the spam bots :-), it's my gmail address)

Comeback after a loooong time

I have been absent from the blogging community for quite some time. Lots of things happened in the middle - in the past 2.5 years. Will start my ramblings soon

Capitalism Vs Communism

And now to one of the most controversial topics of all time: Capitalism Vs. Communism. Before I roll off, let me make it clear that I am no economist. But, at least I do not have hidden political agenda or vested interests. So, here's a simple thought experiment.
Suppose you have two chariots on a race – team A and B. But, this is not a race intended to declare a winner. This is a race where each team gets a bag load of money whenever they pass a milestone. Lets assume that team A gets $100 for every milestone irrespective of what team B does and vice-versa. These chariots are hand-pulled by 100 guys on each side. Now, the rules for how much each person gets on crossing a milestone are different in each team. Team A divides the prize equally among all the guys – a dollar each for every milestone. There's no dependence on individual performance. Team B actually measures each guys contribution and splits the money accordingly. For example, if only two guys did all the effort and the rest slept, then these two get $50 per head and zilch for the rest. You see where I am getting here. With such a setup, who do you think will get more money - Team A or B? Unless you have a political agenda or have been oblivious to whats been happening to the world for the past 30 years or so, you would conclude that team B will forge ahead while team A stalls.
Get the message. There is only one fundamental difference between capitalism and communism – Capitalism produces unequal wealth, communism produces equal poverty. Yes, I do agree that with all you paragons of social justice - communism does create equality. No arguments.

Why AID-TAMU?

Why AID-TAMU?

This post is intended to clarify some of the “anonymous” comments posted in response to Homarjun’s blog:

http://homarjun.blogspot.com/2006/09/aid-tamu.html

The concerned person had raised questions about AID-Central and their allegedly left leaning tendencies. Here’s my take on the issue. Before I proceed any further, let me clarify that I care about communists as much as a fish cares about a bicycle. So, if any of these comments are construed as “left leaning”, then dear friend – you probably have a prejudice against anyone who talks anything good about AID. Having said that, I am not going to comment anything about AID Central – simply because I haven’t had much personal interaction with any of them. Let me just focus on AID-TAMU and why (in my opinion), it makes sense to work for AID-TAMU.

First the basics, the functions of AID-TAMU broadly fall under three categories:

1. Fund raising
2. Selecting projects to fund
3. Spreading Awareness

With regards to interaction with AID-Central, here’s the deal. 20% of the money raised is put into a central fund. This money is used for emergency projects – typically the ones related to disasters (flood, earthquake etc.). This makes sense since (unfortunately) something or the other keeps happening almost every year and we might as well be prepared for it. The remaining 80% can be used to support projects which WE (meaning volunteers at AID-TAMU) deem appropriate.

Our CSH (Community Service Hour, our weekly meetings) are open to every one. So, in case you think a project or an associated NGO has certain political inclinations which you think is “inappropriate”, you are more than welcome to raise your objection. In fact, if you attend enough CSH during our project discussions, you will be eligible to cast a vote on whether the project should be supported. In fact, if you have a project that you think is good enough to be supported, you are welcome to drop in and present it. Our project selection process is rigorous. The rigor is on purpose for we believe that we owe that to our donors and volunteers.

AID-TAMU is one of the best organized student associations on campus. We send out our meeting notices, put up the minutes and account everything to the last penny. I presented the financial details in the CSH and also published the annual report. I am not aware of too many organizations that have that level of openness. Our credibility can be gauged from the wide spectrum of projects that we have supported in the past few years of our existence. We have used our donor money to support projects that improve health care, provide valuable vocational training, micro credit and to improve the lives of disabled children (just to name a few). We have also stood up to help the local community by donating to the Texas A&M Foundation towards supporting victims of hurricane Katrina.

Now as for the credibility of AID, Charity Navigator (independent evaluator of over 5,000 charities) gave AID 4- star (highest) rating. Check this out:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/7135.htm

Now, if you want the check the credibility of Charity Navigator itself, here is an article in TIME talking about Charity Navigator:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1222574,00.html

Now, if you doubt TIME, I am sorry. Can’t do anything about it !!!

AID-TAMU has always strived to both raise money and use them wisely. I am confident that the current EB will continue to do so.

AID GBM and fund-raising ideas

The General Body Meeting of AID-TAMU was held on 16^th September, 2006. I presided over the meeting and made the customary presentation. For more details on AID-TAMU, please refer to:
http://tamu.aidindia.org

From my perspective, the GBM was extremely satisfying. I was pleased with the attendance as well as the response.
Coming to the point, Homarjun gave some pointers for fund-raising. His ideas and related comments can be found at:
http://homarjun.blogspot.com/2006/09/aid-tamu.html

Here’s my response. For starters, I appreciate the enthu and concern. So, don’t take any of this in a negative sense, but just an objective evaluation on the ideas.

Grocery Rides:

This will probably work if we don’t end up renting car. We may have to find some volunteers (with cars) who can take guys on their own car (saves rental charges + insurance). But, the real question is: How many students are willing to pay for grocery ride? Anyway, we could start a pilot program and see how it goes.

Cricket matches:

I think we discussed this in detail over emails.

Airport pick up:

Good idea. Again we need volunteers to do the driving.

Movie Screening:

In my opinion, this may not be possible. We explored this option last year. The copyright rules are like Rubik’s cubes. No one seems to get a clear hold on them. Last year we screened “Swades” in collaboration with the MSC LT Jordan institute. They handled all the copyright stuff. However, this screening was done free. If we were to charge, it’s a whole different deal.

Private Donations:

I mentioned this in my speech. This, I believe is still the most easiest and efficient fund-raiser that has a lot of potential. Those small drops of $5 do add up. Consider this, if we can tap 1/4^th of the Indian population and convince them to donate $5 a month ( ~ a meal), that adds up to $150*5 = $750 a month(I believe there are at least 600 desi’s on campus). That adds up to $9,000 a year !! We can get this rolling if we are aggressive enough.

AID-TAMU has moved from a relatively small organization to a place where we have raised $11,500 in a single year. As good as this looks, we can always do more !!

Reservation - A Scientific Analysis

I am an Engineer. I believe that a scientific analysis is required to verify hypothesis before making grand political claims.
Consider the following analysis.

1. Collect data on a sample (not the entire population, but merely a sample) of people who have derived "considerable" benefit from reservation. Considerable benefit would include (but not limited to) entry into a premier institution and/or a job with annual income beyond a certain threshold
2. Divide this set into two: (a) Those who were NOT "first generation" beneficiaries - in other words those whose parents DID receive such benefits (b) Those who were at a financially stable position BEFORE receiving the benefits (which may be defined as those whose parents had a cumulative annual income beyond a certain threshold) and (c) Those who do NOT belong to categories (a) OR (b)
3. Find the ratio of (a) + (b) : (c). If this ratio is large (which I strongly suspect will), then reservation benefits those who were already "benefited" or in other words does not serve this purpose.

Of course, above analysis is actually easy to perform. But the harder part would be to find a leader who has the nerve to do it.

ps: Statisticians could help me in making this experiment "better". And such stuff has already been done, please let me know about the same.

Reservation - The Unspoken Evil

Evil - morally reprehensible

Let me start off with a brief overview of caste based reservation in India.
For centuries the Hindu society was divided into 4 different castes. The lower caste or the Shutras were subjected to torture, humiliation and abject poverty. Enter the era of independence and the leaders of free India (spearheaded in this effort by Ambedkar) decided to do something about it and introduced caste based reservation. A certain percentage of seats in colleges/universities and government jobs were reserved for the lower caste. This was perceived to "improve" their conditions. But, alas this suffered from several fundamental flaws.

First, the reservation was based on caste and not on financial conditions. The fundamental reasoning behind reservations is to promote the minorities that did not have adequate opportunities. And opportunity (mainly to receive quality education) is related to financial status and NOT caste. One may claim that the above two are correlated (lower caste => financially backward). However, there is a significant portion of the lower caste population that is financially better off than most of India. It turns out that this is the population that receives most of the benefits. If the real objective of reservation is to "iron" out the differences in opportunities, then financial standing and NOT caste should form the basis for reservation.

Second, the initial reservation was supposed to last for 15 years (or so). However, our so called "paragons of social justice" started extending it till date (and beyond). Why should reservation extend to a family that has already been at the receiving end? In other words, why should the son of an IAS officer get the "priviledge" when the son of a priest (earning about a $1 a day) be considered "forward"?

Third, reservation opened a pandora's box for caste based politics. In TN, it was raised to 69% !!! Give me a break !! And reservation was also extended to promotions. Consider this - you reserve a seat in a college, get him the job and why the f!@#$ does one need to reserve his promotion? Is this social equality?

Forth and the one that prompted me to write this blog - reservation in the private sector. Our dear friends from the left were highly successful in making sure that India remained a third world until the 90s. Privatization was considered an expletive and the the only "decent" jobs were the ones that were available in the public sector. The public sectors provided models for incompetence. Then came the 90s and privatization. This opened up immense opportunities. Private companies attracted (and respected) talent. In fact, talented young engineers started shunning public sector and moving into the private sector and the job market flourished. In came the leftists and their "ideolologies". Now they want to force reservation into the private sector.

Let's for a second consider the impact of such a decision. Private and public sectors work differently. Public sector has fixed salaries and promotions (to a large extent). In other words, if one joins in at position x, then he/she gets a pay check y (decided by the government) and will be promoted to position z in k years - x, y, z, k being constants independent of competency. This infact was the recipe to breed incompetency. Why would I work hard for something that I will achieve eventually? Private sector is different. Promotion and salary are based on competency. Now with reservation, you obviously don't expect the same level of competency which existed before. So, companies might be forced to hire lesser talented personnel to "satisfy" the left. Governments will start hiking the percentage reservations as well as introduce quotas for backward, most backword, ridiculously backword etc etc. (like the TN govt.)

In all, this is a recipe for disaster and thanks to the left for bringing it up.
The blog has got longer than I expected. I will continue it in the sequels (if possible).

Blog about my Blog

Well, I am finally trying to catch up to the latest phenonomena.
First of all, thanks for visiting my space. And before you proceed, here are some
warnings/disclaimers.

1. The views represented here are personal and does not represent any organization that I am/was affiliated to.
2. If you are hyper allergic towards anything that is even remotely geekish/nerdish, then you may not find this interesting
3. I don't think I will take any effort towards maintaining "political correctness"